Uk Games Expo

For a birthday treat, me,my family and my Uncle who happened to live nearby went down to the Uk Games Expo and we weren't disappointed.

The first thing I have to mention is the venue, or the change in it. The convention used to be held in a hotel in Birmingham ,which would have been great, if the event was half its size. The crush of people made it impossible to move or look at anything without being swept along with the constant river of people. Imagine being in that situation as an adult, now imagine that, but as a child. So I was delighted when I found out that it was moving to a much larger venue called the NEC which is only a few minutes walk away from the hotel. Now having experienced the new larger venue, I was really amazed at how much it increased the enjoyment of the trip. You had space to breath and talk to all the exhibitors and get to your wanted destination.

One of the things that I probably most enjoyed in the festival was not the browsing or the buying, but actually playing games that I would not normally get to play. For example, I tried a game called Jamaica which was really fun, but not quite worth buying. I also played a mega version of Colt Express (games conventions are really good for these kind of super sized games) which was hilarious as no one knew what the heck was going. However, if you try all the games that catch your eye, you will almost certainly get one you don't like. For my family and I, this came in the form of "Beyond Baker Street" which all my family hated. The theme of Sherlock Homes felt copied and pasted (and I know (or I hope I know) that theme is very important to children, if it's theme is dry, I wouldn't bother playing it). Keeping on this theme theme (see what I did there), we also played  a game called the Gum-Gum machine which actually felt like you where operating a machine. It was really fun, but we didn't really play it properly as were half-asleep when we played it. I found 2 new games through playing games that I bought and played several times since the convention. One of those games was called Celestia and one of them was called Sushi Go (I will almost certainly review these to in more detail in a later post) and I love both of them!

Another thing I should mention, is the wealth of activities apart from the normal brows and buying, there were countless tournaments, loads of talks and even a few rere-enacmentenactment thrown in there which made for a very exciting and diverse time if you liked that kind of thing. I was lucky enough to be able to find time to go and watch a few of the tournaments, and it was very interesting ,and showed me what tournaments are like.

Finally, I have to mention the food, which was absolutely delicious (if rather pricey in some places) and quite convenient. A small selection of food and drinks was supplied in the actual venue its self, but the main place to get food was in a food fair which was situated just outside the hotel where the convention used to take place in.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and I think that anyone who is near it should definitely give it a go. I will definately be going next year (if my Mum lets me) and I hope that it will only get better.